Entries in Alaska
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Allison Shelley/Getty Images(WASILLA, Alaska) -- How long can Sarah Palin claim that jury duty is keeping her from her cross-country bus tour? Indefinitely, in theory.

The state of Alaska is not required to disclose if or when Palin (or any citizen, for that matter) has been called for jury duty.

“Jury lists are confidential, regardless of who is on them,” a spokesperson for the Palmer courthouse, which presides over Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, told ABC News Thursday.

The former Alaska governor/potential presidential candidate blasted the media Wednesday for reports that she canceled her “One Nation Tour,” which has been on a three-week-long hiatus since it left the Northeast. Palin previously told ABC News she wanted to tour Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada and beyond.

In a Facebook post, Palin said she's "looking forward to hitting the open road again" later this summer but, for now, "civic duty calls," and, "even former governors get called up for jury duty."

She added that her bus tour will resume "when the time comes" and, in the meantime, "no one should jump to conclusions" about why she's not traveling.

Randy Snyder/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- You can now search through Sarah Palin’s emails as easily as you’d search through your own.

On Wednesday, the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group, debuted “Sarah’s Inbox,” a searchable database of Palin’s recently released emails that looks and functions like Gmail. Users can search the more than 14,000 emails from Palin’s tenure as Alaska governor by keyword and “star” messages for later viewing.

There’s also handy “Inbox” and “Sent Mail” links as well as a handful of “Sample Searches” including “flippinbelieveit” and “who’s going to trim my hair?”

In a blog post, the Sunlight Foundation said they started the project after they were approached by Twitter users to “take this ugly data and add the Sunlight secret sauce to make it user friendly.”

“Sarah’s Inbox” builds on technology the group developed for “Elena’s Inbox,” which it launched after Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's emails were released during her confirmation hearings last year.﻿

Andrew Burton/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Sarah Palin supporters have united in a collective grizzly roar, angered by the media's decision to analyze more than 25,000 pages of emails from Palin's term as the governor of Alaska.

For the past several days hundreds, if not thousands, of commenters expressed their disappointment online, conservative writers and radio hosts lashed out, and even Ashton Kutcher seemed dismayed.

And now, claiming Palin has been mistreated by the media once again, Conservatives4Palin, a non-profit website with more than 1 million visitors each month, is planning to analyze the emails themselves.

"Some of us were like, 'Oh no, it's just going to be a massive witch hunt.' We were afraid of what the media would cook up or try to take out of context," said Conservatives4Palin contributor Nicole Coulter, who lives in Hershey, Pennsylvania. "We feel like the media was hoping to find something to pin on her negatively but it's kind of blown up in their faces, with all due respect."

Coulter, who was a Democrat until deciding to become a Republican in 2004, has spent the past year writing for the pro-Palin website, which was co-founded in 2009 by Rebecca Mansour, a current SarahPAC staffer.

Coulter says it's impossible to read the emails and not come away with the impression that Palin is loyal and protective of her staff.

"We're categorizing all those emails that suggest the record of a competent and ethical person," she said. "Her record is being finally revealed. I hope everybody reads the emails."

Although the email dump wasn't damaging to Palin, many of her advocates remain frustrated that the emails were posted in the first place. Angry comments have dominated news websites since Friday, and over the weekend the Twitter account of Crivella West, the company that put Palin's emails online for MSNBC, Mother Jones magazine and investigative news website ProPublica, were hacked.

Sara D. Davis/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- What might Sarah Palin and Kevin Costner have had in common? Top billing in the Field of Dreams?

Stephen K. Bannon, the filmmaker of the forthcoming documentary about the former Alaska governor, The Undefeated, revealed on Monday that he wanted to debut the film in Iowa's iconic baseball field.

"We tried to get the Field of Dreams but they just don't do these things," he told reporters after a Monday night screening in New York. Instead, he said the still-in-the-works premiere will happen in "a barn or a cornfield or a town square. It'll be the very Iowa-ness of the place."

After Iowa, The Undefeated will screen in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada before opening in AMC theaters nationwide on July 15. Whether or not Palin decides on her role in the 2012 race before then, Bannon believes she, and his film, will pervade the election.

"If she's not in, the spirit of her will be in this race," he said. "There's something brewing that she represents, and if she is not a candidate per se, the spirit of Gov. Palin will definitely be there."

Indeed, The Undefeated paints Palin as a martyr, a woman who gave life to the tea party while getting beaten down by establishment politicians on both sides of the aisle. Savage scenes, including a pack of lions tearing apart a zebra and a man being buried alive, drive home the film's message that the former Alaska governor is a victim of unfounded attacks. In Bannon's view, the attention paid to the 25,000 Palin emails Alaska released last week added fuel to the fire.

"I'm not a woman's libber and I'm not a gender politics guy," he said. "But one has to look at the empirical evidence. And there's just something out there that this woman has had more beat downs than anybody."

But according to Bannon, the film, and particularly its title, is about more than Palin.

"The working title I started with was Take a Stand," he said. "As I started to make it, I realized it was about Gov. Palin but it was also about the values she manifests -- The Undefeated is really kind of those working class, tea party values that the country's been built upon."﻿

Sara D. Davis/Getty Images(JUNEAU, Alaska) -- The State of Alaska will release 25,000 emails of its former Gov. Sarah Palin on Friday as part of an open-records request made during the 2008 presidential race by numerous citizen groups and newspapers.

The emails cover the period from December 2006 until September 2008. They include emails from her personal Yahoo! account used to conduct state business.

The contents of the emails are not yet known. Most of them could be routine and mundane, but some could be frank and revealing, as Palin seemed to indicate on Fox News Sunday.

"A lot of those emails obviously weren't meant for public consumption. They are between staff members," Palin said.

The former Alaska governor added that some people may try to take the emails out of context.

"They'll never truly know what the context of each one of the emails was," she said.

The piles of emails are so voluminous, some newspapers that have traditionally been unsupportive of Palin, like the New York Times, are actually recruiting readers to screen them to try to sniff out anything unflattering. ﻿

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images(JERUSALEM) -- Sarah Palin made her first pilgrimage to the Holy Land on Sunday, joining a long line of presidential hopefuls who have traveled to Israel prior to throwing their hat in the ring.

During a tour of the Western Wall Palin expressed support for Jews praying openly at the Temple Mount asking her Israeli tour guides, “why are you apologizing all the time?” The Jerusalem Post reported.

The Temple Mount, a holy site to both Jews and Muslims, is one of the world’s most contested religious sites.

One of Palin’s tour guides World Likud Chairman Danny Danon said Palin “really connected to the story of the Jewish nation.” According to The Jerusalem Post, Danon said “I can clearly say from the questions she asked in relation to our conflict here with the Muslims in these holy sites that she knows that we are right and that the Muslims are just claiming things for provocation and they’re not right.”

The former Alaska governor prayed at the Wall and left a note with a personal prayer in it.

“I’m so thankful to be able to be here, and I’m thankful to know the Israel-American connection will grow and strengthen as the peace negotiations continue,” Palin reportedly said.

Palin’s trip to Israel comes on the heels of her visit to India over the weekend. On Monday Palin and her husband Todd will have dinner with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara at their residence in Jerusalem.

Although the 2008 vice presidential nominee remains mum about her 2012 intentions, several of Palin’s potential rivals for the GOP candidacy have also met with Netanyahu in recent months, including former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

Palin has said recently it could be several months before she decides whether or not to run in 2012.

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Sarah Palin is making her first visit to Israel. The former Alaska governor will stop there following a trip to India, where she is visiting for a speech on Saturday. Palin’s trip to Israel follows a parade of Republican presidential hopefuls, including Mitt Romney in January, and, more recently, Mike Huckabee.

While in Israel, Palin is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who often hosts high-profile American politicians. An official in his office said, "The Prime Minister knows the importance of the U.S. political system."

Palin, who arrived in India on Wednesday, will speak to the “India Today Conclave,” an annual public policy forum.

In a press release from the organization, Palin said, “I'm very excited to visit India. Americans have a great respect for the world's largest democracy," adding, "India and the United States are partners in trade and business affairs, and working together our two nations can build a more peaceful and prosperous world."

Palin’s speech will deliver the concluding address at the event; with an talk entitled “My Vision of America.”

Palin has traveled to Hong Kong and Haiti since stepping down as Alaska’s governor in 2009.﻿

Clark James Mishler/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, delivered this week's Republican address, underscoring the issue of rising energy prices. But first, Murkowski expressed her support for the people of Japan in the aftermath of Friday's earthquake and tsunami. The Alaskan senator also commended the actions of President Obama regarding the disaster in Japan, and supported "his commitment to bring America's resources to bear to help Japan recover."

Amid social and political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, Murkowski drew attention to the interconnectedness of the global economy. She shared steps Republicans wish to take that she says will "protect America from international conflicts, create thousands of jobs, reduce our budget deficit and help bring energy prices back down to Earth."

Sen. Murkowski expressed concern that the climbing price of oil could cause the U.S. to slip back into recession, and suggests that the U.S. government shares the blame with international events pushing these prices higher.

Murkowski, who is also the lead Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, proposed that one step that ought to be taken is to decrease the U.S.'s dependence on foreign energy.

"America now imports 11 million barrels of oil every day. Last year alone, we spent more than $330 billion on foreign oil, much of it in countries that are not our friends," she said in the weekly address.

Noting that, contrary to what some might think, the U.S. is the world's third-largest oil producer, Murkowski said, "Republicans know that it's past time to produce more of America's oil."

Murkowski calls on Washington to remove the red tape and streamline regulations to boost production. Do this, she said, and we will reap the "tremendous benefits of American oil production -- jobs, money and security."

Photo Courtesy - Getty Images(ANCHORAGE, Alaska) -- Sarah Palin’s tenure as Alaskan governor was back under the spotlight Sunday as the Anchorage Daily News reported that a leaked, unpublished manuscript by one of Palin’s former aides alleges that the conservative author and Tea Party favorite broke election law during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

The unfinished tell-all by Frank Bailey, tentatively titled In Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years, is based on over 60,000 emails he sent and received while working in Palin’s inner circle, a team he joined at the beginning of her 2006 campaign for Alaska governor.

Blind Allegiance was written with author Ken Morris and Jeanne Devon, publisher of the website Mudflats.net.

Bailey has not responded to news of the manuscript’s release, but Devon wrote on her website that it was leaked without knowledge by its authors or agents.

“We on this end are shocked and horrified that this has happened, but the toothpaste is out of the tube as they say,” Devon said.

In Blind Allegiance, Bailey reportedly writes about how the Palin team became obsessed with petty squabbles.

"We set our sights and went after opponents in coordinated attacks, utilizing what we called ‘Fox News surrogates’ -- friendly blogs, ghost-written op-eds, media opinion polls (that we often rigged), letters to editors, and carefully edited speeches," Bailey writes, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

Bailey served in Palin’s administration and was a key figure in the 2008 "troopergate" scandal. According to the manuscript, he was approached by Palin’s husband Todd to consider being her chief of staff.

In one of Bailey’s harshest allegations, the former aide says that Palin worked with the Republican Governors Association during her campaign for governor, a move that breaks election law.

Photo Courtesy - Mark Wilson/Getty Images(WASILA, Alaska) -- For the first time, Sarah Palin weighed in on the report from the National Enquirer linking her husband Todd to prostitutes in Alaska.

Appearing on the The Bob and Mark Morning Show, a radio call-in show in Alaska, the former governor said, “What hurts are the lies that come from Alaskans.”

She noted that the Anchorage Police Department denied the Enquirer story. “Look at this recent BS about Todd supposedly being all caught up in a prostitution ring in Anchorage. And then APD had to come out and say bull, there’s no evidence," Palin said.

Indeed Lt. Dave Parker of the APD told the New York Daily News "It was just guilt by innuendo, nothing else…There’s not one scintilla of evidence that Todd Palin had anything to do with this."

On the radio show Thursday morning, Palin added, “Heck, all they needed to do was ask me or ask Todd himself, ‘Hey, Todd, you been hanging out with hookers in Anchorage?’ And he’d tell the truth and obviously it was a big lie.”